Most of the appliance products currently available in the market emphasize built-in artificial intelligence, i.e. they have capability to regulate their functions according to changes in the environment. One example is that an intelligent air conditioner can regulate the amount of cold air emission according to the room temperature. Another example is that an intelligent refrigerator can ring an alarm bell to remind users if the refrigerator door is open for a certain period of time.
Some systems claim to integrate these intelligent appliances. However, these systems require manual instructions to achieve true integration. As FIG. 1 shows, all intelligent appliances 105, 107, . . . , 113 are connected to a terminal 103 through an intranet 101. A user can input instructions via the terminal 103 to access any of the intelligent appliances 105, 107, . . . , 113 and integrate the use of them. For example, although a TV set 107 has its own audio output equipment, one can still instruct the terminal 103 to retrieve the audio signals of the TV set 107 and to transmit them to an audio player 109 for better audio quality.
The terminal 103 might be a personal computer or a microprocessor embedded in one of the intelligent appliances 105, 107, . . . , 113. Regardless of the terminal's structure, this system of the prior art requires a user to input instructions manually to transmit signals among the intelligent appliances 105, 107, . . . , 113. Besides, such a system cannot make an appropriate decision itself in terms of transmitting signals to the most appropriate intelligent appliance according to a user's location.